Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Comfort

I didn't have the greatest Christmas...especially since we had relatives over. I tend to resent anyone outside the immediate family butting in. Yesterday and today I made it up to myself with nice long 'comfort sessions'.

So I watched the entire Pride and Prejudice BBC series and then read a Georgette Heyer novel and three Asterixes.

Pride and Prejudice is brilliant, and I love the BBC adaptation. Jennifer Ehle's so wonderfully Lizzielike that it's easy to forget that she isn't that pretty. Colin Firth is...*breathes heavily* just perfect. The English department in college decided to screen this last year (in two sessions, no one was going to stay five hours after college) and the effect it had on people was rather unnerving. There's something very disturbing about being in a roomful of sexually aroused young girls who make animal noises at intervals. The Firth bath scene was greeted with the loudest response. I did not show my appreciation in so crass a manner. I whimpered quietly to myself.I still haven't seen the most recent version of P&P, or the Laurence Olivier version. I think (blasphemy!) Keira Knightley looks the part better than Jennifer Ehle. But if the spirit of the book is 'light and bright and sparkling', the BBC adaptation captures it perfectly.

Georgette Heyer is one of the only authors my mother and I can both read (another is Agatha Christie). I don't know if there's some deep rooted feminine need for books about feisty, beautiful girls (of the upper class, please) falling in love with rich, dark men. But we certainly seem to like them. I do, anyway. And when they're accompanied by descriptions of regency dinners, horses and snuffboxes, they're made even better. Georgette Heyer's books may not have more *substance* than your average Mills & Boon (though it's nice that her heroines don't have unidimensional characters. And she's less mushy) but they're delightful anyway.

Asterix needs a seperate entry.

The above forms of entertainment must be combined with tea and pakoras, coffee, chikki, and occasionally chicken soup. There must be a quilt and lots of pillows, a big old sweatshirt, and a Leonard Cohen greatest hits CD playing in the background. Merry Christmas, everyone. :)